Employees at the shop follow a routine procedure, looking through customers’ goods to gauge their value for resale. The Sandy Hollow Road store buys used clothing and other items to resell them.

So when workers found $4,600 in cash in a box piled with shoes, returning the money was their pleasure.

Owners said a local woman, who had come to the store to sell some of her deceased mother’s old belongings, never knew the money existed.

The Register Star agreed to withhold the woman’s name for safety reasons.

She came to the store with three garbage bags full of clothing and other items about two weeks ago, owners say. She also brought in a box full of shoes, said Collins’ daughter, Stephanie Cordonnier, who examined the goods. It was while searching through that box that Cordonnier found a bank book containing 46 $100 bills.

“I just came to a stop,” Cordonnier said. “It was kind of emotional for me because it was the holidays and she just lost her mother.”

The items the woman brought in would have earned her about $40, Cordonnier said. Instead, she got 115 times that.

It’s more money than Collins feels comfortable keeping at the store, where almost everything is sold for less than $10.

“She was just shocked that her mother had that money in a shoe box,” Collins said. “She was so grateful (because) that money was so needed.”

Staff writer Kevin Haas can be reached at 815-544-3452 or khaas@rrstar.com.